Installers: So what do you do when... HDLite happens?

[ZandarKoad]

Two days ago I did a four room install (322, 311, 211) for a customer who knew his stuff. He knew what HD was. He's had several services over the years and has owned his HD set for about 4-5 years. He had his own HDMI -and- DVI cables, and hooked them up before I could get around to it. (I checked all his connections - they are all good.) He just called me this morning complaining about his HD signal. He says it's better than SD of course, but it dosn't hold a candle to the TRUE HD that he's seen with OTA or through other providers in years gone by. Now he wants to cancel. What would you do?

I made sure he tried everything under the sun with his cables, and switched from 720p to 1080i on different channels (he did this alot - he read the 211's manual the day I installed it). I know from experience that somehow some idiot CSR will generate a trouble call. But even then, I can't do anything. The funny thing is, he WANTS me to come out to un-install everything because he KNOWS I did a great job with the install. He know's who's fault it is that the HD isn't real great, and it's not mine. I tried to explain to him how to get the uninstall work order sent back to our office so I can handle it for him. I just hope it doesn't come back as a TC and BITE me in the NETHER REGIONS.

 

[mlb]

There isn't much you can do. The PQ isn't as good as a full bitrate/resolution OTA signal. He has to decide if quality is more important that quantity in this case...

 

[webbydude]

It's not your fault as to overall PQ with regards to HD (or in this case, HD-lite). Like yourself, I've ran into instances where the customer complained enough about it that I was sent back under the CH code (change of service). Which is total and utter BS (I'm almost out of abbreviations ) since if it happens under the 1st 90 days of install it bites me in the butt. Fortunately I've been slapping stickers on the remotes with the telephone of the RSP (ok...yet another abbreviation) I work with and explain to the customer to call *them* up before calling Dish.

With that kind of trip, I at least get paid something for my troubles. Not to mention the RSP puts the customer complaint *and* my findings in the customer notes so that if they do call up to Dish it may help in the long run. The more people that bitch and moan, the better the chances are that Dish may improve the PQ. As a side note/tangent, it's really a F*ing shame that Dish chose to put the bulk of their HD channels on the POS (ok...last abreviation... ) 129 bird.

 

[ZandarKoad]

Update: Customer cancelled 2 days after installation. The way Dish happened to handle it was they simply told him they'd sent out boxes for the recievers (... and the LNB, but the customer doesn't know about that yet probably. ). The cool thing was that the customer knew 100% that it wasn't my fault and he wasn't gonna let Dishnetwork try to generate a TC to get a tech out to 'fix' a problem. Thank goodness. So no uninstall, no TC, no problems: except for Dish.

 

[dodge]

Dish net

Thats too bad, I just hope you get paid for that install and not screwed by dish. I think the pq on dish hd is pretty good compared to the hd by comcast I have seen.

 

[Kaydigi]

Thats too bad, I just hope you get paid for that install and not screwed by dish. I think the pq on dish hd is pretty good compared to the hd by comcast I have seen.

Does Comast compress their signal also?

 

[KimmiKat]

Depends on the area. A member in our family went from Dish to Comcrap and I noticed the HD signal is more sharper then many channels on Dish, although they have a lot less channels.

Does Comast compress their signal also?

 

[KE4EST]

I have ran into this also. I haven't had any cancel because of it yet. One guy almost did, and like you, he knew it wasn't my fault. He decided to wait it out. However in his case if he canceled his only other option was D* since no cable in the bonnies and OTA is snowy at best. In my situation this guy moved from a bigger city that had, well from what he said great HD on cable. Since I also handle D* the option came up, but he knew his stuff too, he said yeah right when they get more HD channels and lower their prices....so go figure...

 

[chadzx11]

Fortunately I've been slapping stickers on the remotes with the telephone of the RSP (ok...yet another abbreviation) I work with and explain to the customer to call *them* up before calling Dish.

With that kind of trip, I at least get paid something for my troubles.

The RSP I worked for wanted us to do that. Only, they didn't want to pay for the service calls. They just wanted us to STFU the customer, and if it was a bad reciever, then WE could have the priveledge of calling E* to have a work order issued, calling the RSP to verify they got the WO, then proceeding with the job. F that! I stopped putting stickers on boxes when they called and asked me to go over an hour to some douchebag's house who changed the channel on his TV 2 and could not get it back, despite knowing exactly what channel it was supposed to be on. WTF---its his TV, if he can't figure out how to operate it, why should it be my responsibility to go babysit him?


LMFAO. It may be unproffessional, but I did have one rock ape customer who kept bugging me over non satellite BS (vcr/dvd/surround sound crap) until I stood up and told him that I did NOT have time to babysit him. You want to talk about somebody getting pissed. Dude almost had a stroke, but he never bugged me with his BS again. He had called me one time with a blue screen on a D*. I told him to turn off the VCR. He said it wasn't on, so I went. There was a doily on top of the vcr hanging down in front of the GD light, and the GD VCR was in fact on. He said "oh." I wanted to kill him!

 

[webbydude]

The RSP I worked for wanted us to do that. Only, they didn't want to pay for the service calls. They just wanted us to STFU the customer, and if it was a bad reciever, then WE could have the priveledge of calling E* to have a work order issued, calling the RSP to verify they got the WO, then proceeding with the job. F that! I stopped putting stickers on boxes when they called and asked me to go over an hour to some douchebag's house who changed the channel on his TV 2 and could not get it back, despite knowing exactly what channel it was supposed to be on. WTF---its his TV, if he can't figure out how to operate it, why should it be my responsibility to go babysit him?

Oh I wholeheartedly agree! This is why my RSP stopped that policy. Too many of us techs were getting tired of going back to our job (last man out...blah, blah, blah!) and finding out the customer either had the VCR turned on, wrong channel, or put a splitter in the in-coming SAT line; so we would "create" a workorder and "find" a defective component we could RA...just so we could get paid. The RA department was getting totally swamped with bogus defective equipment.

 

[ZandarKoad]

Actually, my retailer has the same policy with the stickers. I put them on every remote and every reciever. I can empathize with you but from my experience it's done wonders to cut down on TCs (within the first 12 days at least - which is the critical timeframe as far as Dishnetwork is concerned). I just have to drive home the concept that they are supposed to CALL ME CALL ME CALL ME instead of Dish. Most of the time I won't answer my cell phone if I don't know who it is. Then I'll listen to the message they left, look up their account to see if it's older than 12 days. If it is, I'll just delete their message and go on with my life! Otherwise I call them back and gently coax them into putting their head in a vice. That makes all the problems go away.

If they do end up calling dish back, and they do schedual a trouble call, it won't count against our scorecard if it's older than 12 days. I say let the CRS do the phone work.